NFU Scotland (NFUS) has urged supermarkets and brands to “clearly label the origin of all their pork, bacon and gammon products”, after its latest shelfwatch found that consumers might “struggle” to identify where the meat has come from.
Marks & Spencer, Co-op and Waitrose were found to be the only supermarkets to offer 100% British pork, bacon and gammon, according to the NFUS’s shelf watch that surveyed 47 supermarkets across Scotland between 29th September and 4th October, looking at pork, bacon and gammon offerings.
All other supermarkets were found to be stocking fresh and processed pork, bacon and gammon products from a wide range of different countries of origin including the UK, Denmark, Holland, Germany and Ireland.
In addition, NFUS stated that some own-label and branded products were labelled with more than one country of origin such as ‘Germany and Holland’ or even as broadly labelled as just ‘EU’.
It also added that packs “all too often, had no clear indication of where the meat has actually come from”.
The results showed that 6% of bacon, gammon and pork had an unclear of confusing country of origin, 5% had mixed countries of origin on the same pack (e.g. Germany/Holland) and 15% listed the ‘EU’ as the country of origin.
NFUS commented that it will be working with supermarkets going forward to encourage them to “take the lead from Marks and Spencer’s, Waitrose and the Co-op when it comes to Country of Origin Labelling”.
NFU Scotland’s food chain policy manager, Lindsey Macdonald, said: “The lack of transparency found on some products, particularly processed goods, is alarming and is indicative of how little care is shown to label meat that is considered anything other than ‘fresh meat’.
“It is a hard fact that the ‘last point of processing’ oval on meat packaging does not tell customers where their meat has actually come from.”
She also added that the “fake farm branding remains a huge problem and contributes to the problem”, commenting: “As an example, pig meat products bearing the ‘Woodside Farm’ brand at Tesco were, when examined, found to be from various countries around the EU and not one single source.”
The British Retail Consortium stated on behalf of its members, including Tesco, Sainsbury's and Lidl: “The retail industry has been proactive and positive in engaging with calls for greater information on country of origin, including voluntary efforts to ensure this is clearly marked on packaging. Retailers have taken great care to provide origin information for many products, enabling customers to make choices such as favouring British produce.”
Meat Management has contacted Morrisons, Asda, and Aldi for comment.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
